I’m not shocked at all. Another issue is recruiters posting fake jobs and asking for references as step one. Soon as I say “I don’t provide references until the last step, and only to the company hiring” they hang up on me
Is this normal?
I would never fill that in, because I wouldn't want to bother my references. I know some of them don't really like doing it, but do it as a favour because we're on good terms. Probably not a rare scenario. I'm okay asking in a "if you provide me a reference, I will get a new job" as the final stage, but not as a "just checking in case I might land a job".
The amount of spam and fake jobs on LI + other major sites is just disgusting and is ripe for government to come in and crack some heads.
But then later another group asked me for references at the beginning, I declined to provide them, and then they were okay with proceeding through the interview process.
Maybe it would work in the general case to always reply to such a request with "some previous group ghosted me, and so I've vowed to withhold the references until later in the process."?
but that's not the only thing. in germany it is common to ask for written reference letters which are called "arbeitszeugnis" (work report card, like the report card you get from school). that term makes me feel like i was a kid. it clearly establishes a hierarchy. i am the lowly subordinate employee and you are the superior employer that i am to look up to. it gets really wierd when i consider that i have been on the other side as an employer myself. (and by law these letters must be honest and may not contain unfounded negative statements which makes employers avoid writing anything negative because they could get sued.)
and then there are places who ask for actual school report cards or at least grade averages or want to know how i did in math in school, as if that was in any way useful to understand how i would do as a programmer decades later.